444 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



A Peep at the Western World, published in London in 1863, which tells 

 us that the name Acadia is derived from "a simple, unobtrusive, hardy 

 little flower of that name which grows wild in the country." In this 

 statement, which involves evidently the Mayflower, the provincial 

 floral emblem of Nova Scotia, we have obviously an example of the 

 drawing of a wrong combination from the too hastily filled mind of 

 a not very critical tourist. 



Summarizing, now, this part of our subject, we see that the 

 Gesner-Rand-Dawson theory of the origin of Acadie from the Micmac 

 place-name termination -acadie achieved wide acceptance, displacing 

 all other explanations. Such was the condition in 1896 when the 

 first protest was entered. As a result of somewhat extensive studies 

 upon the place-nomenclature and cartography of New Brunswick, 

 involving secondarily the Acadian region as a whole, as embodied in 

 Monographs published in the Transactions of this Society, I was led 

 to the conviction that the current explanation of the origin of Acadie 

 was wrong; and I expressed this opinion briefly in my Monograph upon 

 Place-nomenclature, in these Transactions, II, 1896, ii, 216, where I 

 pointed out that the name can be traced back through historical 

 records to a form that precludes a Micmac origin, and to a collection 

 of names wholly European in origin without any suggestion of native 

 influence. This argument I elaborated at greater length in the New 

 Brunswick Magazine, III, 1899, 153-7, with a synopsis in the Educa- 

 tional Review (St. John), XVI, 1902, 12, an addition of some further 

 cartographical data in these Transactions, VII, 1901, ii, 161, and a 

 brief statement in my edition of Denys' well-known Description, 

 published by the Champlain Society in 1908, 126. The only writers, 

 however, so far as I know, who have yet taken account of this view 

 are two, viz.. Dr. S. E. Dawson, who, in his excellent book The Saint 

 Lawrence, 1905, 249, discusses it, (without bibliographical citations), 

 to an unfavourable conclusion, and Messrs. Grant and Biggar, who, 

 in their translation of Lescarbot's Histoire published by the Cham- 

 plain Society (II, 1911, 211), mention it with the comment that 

 strong reasons therefor are given by the author. And such remains 

 the status of the matter at present. 



I shall now re-state the evidence which seems to me to disprove 

 the native Micmac origin of Acadie and to indicate a European 

 origin for the word. 



In the first place, Gesner, Rand, and Dawson base their view 

 that Acadie is the Micmac place-name termination -acadie solely 

 upon the resemblance between the two, without any appeal to the 

 history of the word or other documentary support. Logically the 

 argument is this: — the country has been called Acadie from early 



